Team Indus to Raise US$40 mn through Crowdfunding and Corporate Sponsorship

Published By : 07 Jul 2017 |Published By : QYRESEARCH

Team Indus, an Indian for-profit organization, is looking to raise an investment worth US$40 mn through a mix of crowdfunding and corporate sponsorship before the launch of its lunar rover mission scheduled in December. The startup, financially supported by a host of big shots – Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal, Nandan Nilekani, Ratan Tata, and Accel Partner’s Shekhar Kirani and Subrata Mitra, has so far raised US$20 mn in equity funding and another US$20 mn in the payload partnerships with third parties.

The company, founded in 2011, is an esteemed part of the Lunar XPrize competition of Google, which is intended to land a private rover on the Moon by this December. 11 payloads will be carried in the spacecraft with the rover. Currently, the rover as well as the spacecraft is under construction at CSIR National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), which is India’s second leading aerospace company. The finishing assembly of the spacecraft and rover will happen at the facility of Team Indus in North Bengaluru.

“The structure of the spacecraft is ready. The mission command center and the software is up, functional, and is undertaking testing currently,” told Rahul Narayan, the founder of Team Indus. He, however, stated that the enterprise may take a few liberties since the mission is a landing-focused and shorter one. The flight testing of the payloads and the spacecraft will take place in the next month at the ISRO's unit.

Team Indus is a 130-associates strong entity and is looking forward to surface as a prominent company in private satellite construction and space mission management.